Colder Weather
by mel.wolfgirl
Summary: "As she wipes her eyes and fights to find her smile, Cassie tells herself that the cold will pass. The world turns far too fast to stand still forever." Set during The Imprinted Chronicles: Book 3. AU, wolfpack, imprint oneshot. Paul, Cassie, Collin, Jake


_A/N For the kind of friends that are there when you go into the cold and are still there when you fight your way back out again. Written to "_Colder Weather_" by the Zac Brown Band. _

_-Love, mel_

**Colder Weather**

Sometimes Cassie dreams of a stage, the black wood smooth beneath her feet as she stands upstage right. Her whole life she's been center stage, spinning and spinning for all the world to see, but not anymore. Now she's tucked in a corner, and as she stays balanced on her toes, still perfectly en pointe, it occurs to her that no one is watching.

Cassie dances anyways.

* * *

The cold months of winter have sunk into her bones, and as Cassie walks through the thick snow that surrounds her and Paul's home, she watches the world move on without her. The tiny cabin looks even smaller when blanketed in white winter, and while Cassie has always wanted to live in a world that needed no safety nets or protective barriers, there's something to be said for the steadfastness that is this place. Solid, steadfast, unchanging.

Funny how being stripped for all the world to see was easier than having a safe place to hide.

The reservation is especially quiet, the snowfall muting the infrequent sounds of the wildlife that made La Push their winter home. This is Paul's world, a world in which Cassie doesn't really belong, but that doesn't mean that she can't find the beauty in it. There's beauty in everything, even when one feels themselves shrinking down a little more every day, and Cassie's determined to fill her life with the bright colors that conflict so often with this black and white world she's found herself a part of.

Determination or not, it is obvious that she's an unwanted addition to this small town, and Cassie never has been good at saying or doing the appropriate things to become accepted. She is who she is, even when she's made lesser because of it. A square peg can be shaved down to fit into a round hole, but Cassie thinks her pointy edges are her best parts.

Perhaps if she loved Paul a little less she could leave, but she doesn't, so she stays. Love has always ruled her decisions more than discomfort, even when that makes things more complicated. Plus it wounds Paul too deeply when he's left behind. She won't do that to him again.

As Red wanders hoodless through the snow, she scoops up handfuls of the white fluffy stuff and balances lumps of it on her nose, and she laughs to herself when it melts and slides into her eyes. Lashes wet and dark on her cheekbones, she stands in front of this shelter that Paul has given her, loath to go in. Even the best shelters can feel like prisons when locked inside for too long, and Cassie has always done her hiding best when out in the open. It's when she closes herself away that the healing starts taking hold, and Cassie's not sure she should be allowed to heal when she has caused so much hurt.

Pain is in the healing, in the accepting, and she's just not ready yet.

So Cassie stays outside, and she draws smiley faces in the windows to show how she's determined to be, no matter what expression her face keeps accidentally sliding to in her reflection. Cassie wonders if Paul has ever looked at himself in the frost covered windowpanes, and then smiles because she knows that he never has. Her fiancée gives his everything to the world around him, and there are simply too many people for Paul to be looking at for him to have time to focus in on himself.

Cassie misses that level of distraction intensely. She makes faces at herself just because she can, and Cassie draws an extra smiley because she misses Paul too, and another one with pointy ears and a wagging tail because she misses Paul's wolf almost as much. The man and the wolf are integral parts of each other, and she loves all of Paul, not just the easiest to accept parts.

It's warmer inside, despite the generator having trouble again. Cassie stays out here anyways.

Sometimes Collin walks in the snow with her. His smile is easy and his broad shoulders are relaxed. Collin is young, but he's lived long enough with the support that is Paul beneath him. Collin knows that no matter how far he falls that there is someone who will catch him before he hits the ground. It gives him a youthful confidence that is solidifying into the man that he will become, strong and sure and uncompromising in his beliefs. Cassie can see the fingerprints of Paul's influence in Collin's eyes, on his tongue, and in his actions. He will be a living shelter for the ones he loves, because Paul has taught him that is what is _right_.

Collin's kindness is all his own.

As they walk, Collin teases her about her red nose and the snowflakes on her lashes, and when her smile slips despite herself, Collin takes her slender hand in his and walks closer to her side. There are rumors about the blonde woman that Paul Coho has shacked up with, and every day and night that Collin spends in her company makes his life harder. But Collin has a fierce, almost vicious, protectiveness in him and the nights are long. Cassie's done things in her past that she's not proud of, and in his solid presence, the time passes easier.

Cassie can tell that Collin is waiting for her, waiting for her to spill the secrets that only Paul knows, but she can't bring herself to do it. She's never forgotten that he's younger than he seems, and just because someone is larger than life doesn't mean that they are ready for the worst parts of it. She'd rather just enjoy his company than remind herself of the bad times, so she cheerfully ignores his gently worded hints. If that hurts him or disappoints him, Collin's very good at hiding it. He's always known instinctively what Cassie needs.

Collin and Cassie have always understood each other from the start, and their friendship is deepening into something permanent, a tie that will one day be strong enough to keep even the most exhausted of heads above water. But in these cold winter nights, when Paul is gone and they are both feeling that loneliness, they don't realize it. Instead they laugh and they tease and a few unfortunate times they try to cook together, but they have learned that microwaved dinners work the best for both of them. They are together for now, and that means more to her than she can explain. Cassie knows how it feels to lose the ones you want with you forever, so she holds Collin's hand a little tighter, a little more desperately each day.

They sit on the porch, in a spot where a girl with a broken arm once listened to a song. Collin can't play, but his pleasant, cheerful voice is a song that Cassie thinks is worth dancing for, even if her dance is just a game of Monopoly where the hotels are gummy bears. It's the best she can give him right now, even though she knows he deserves better.

Upstage right, her balance is slipping.

* * *

Very few days pass when Jake doesn't stop by to check on her.

He should be sleeping, he always has to patrol in a few hours. Instead he spends his time with Cassie, usually trying to keep the generator from dying out completely because he knows she and Paul can't afford a new one. This one wasn't old, but Paul bought it secondhand, and like many things that get passed around too many times, the generator just doesn't run the way it should anymore. So Jake works and Cassie babbles because she still takes refuge in talking in circles, and as her tongue dances through the cold night air, the Alpha listens. He listens and he processes, and it takes him some time, but Jake's learning to keep up with her mind and to pull the slivers of importance from the stream of words she says.

The Alpha rarely lets his understanding show. When Cassie thinks someone doesn't realize what she's saying, she says even more, if gilded in words wielded like glitter glue, sparkly and pretty and barely able to keep her thoughts together. When he runs at night, Jake thinks about glitter and glue and people that fight to keep themselves from falling apart after they've been stripped down to the rawness underneath. Seth gets distracted by the glitter, but Embry understands. How could he not, when he sleeps next to that rawness every night, and is a salve to that rawness when it cracks and bleeds?

Jake can't explain in words how much it bothers him that any of his Pack has cause to bleed.

It's the Alpha's job to keep his Pack close, to keep them safe, but more than anything, to give them what they need. Jake's young and he's not perfect, but Cassie's bound tighter to the Pack than the other imprints, and it gives him clarity. So he doesn't hold her hand, he doesn't give her another glitter stick, doesn't help her find new glue. Instead Jake teaches her how to keep the pipes from freezing, and how to fix the toilet when it stops flushing, and how to change the propane tank on the grill out back. And when he's done what he can, and the darkness of the night can hide her face, Jake and his motorcycle help her—if only temporarily—to escape.

Sometimes when they hit the longer stretches of road, Cassie pulls her helmet off and presses her face into Jake's wide back and lets go of her tight hold on his waist. Her eyes squeeze shut when Jake guns the bike and as the wind whips through her hair, for a moment she is free of everything.

There is no Paul. There is no Collin and no La Push, no old life and no new, no expectations and no consequences for her actions. For a moment there is only her, spinning as fast as she can. There's no ice skating rink at the end of this dance because no one will catch her this time. She can dance, faster and faster until no one can keep up, and she—

She loves Paul. Whatever else happens, she won't leave him again.

It's like applying a Band-Aid to a trauma wound…not enough to stop the bleeding, but it's all she's got right now. Cassie doesn't know that in those moments, the Alpha wants to keep driving, to keep going and never turn back around. Life for her in the reservation is far from easy. She's isolated, but most of that isolation is because he's keeping the Pack at a distance from her. Jake knows that it would be easiest to let Cassie sink into Pack and never come out, to never come to terms with her pain on her own, to hide within the masses as she's done for so long. But she's stronger than that, and she's _better_ than that, so Jake turns around and takes her back to her home, Paul's shelter, her prison.

Cassie winks and tells Jake that she likes it when he puts something that big between her legs, but her heart isn't into it. Jake chuckles and gives her a kiss on the forehead and thinks that some things take more time than others, some people take more time than others. He might seem callous, but the Alpha has faith in her to find her own feet, to use her own strength. Cassie's a survivor, and there was a time that was a point of pride for her. Jake wants her there again.

As he leaves her alone, Jake lets his hand linger on her shoulder for a moment longer. He knows what she's not saying, but like the rest of them, the Alpha's waiting for her to be ready. So he lets her spin upstage right all alone, and wishes she knew that someone was watching her balancing act. They all were, she just couldn't see past her own pain to see them yet.

Cassie will wake up tonight with her father's name on her lips, hazel eyes filled with tears, and she'll realize that freedom is something that she let be taken from her long ago. She wants it, but she doesn't know how to get it back. For right or wrong, Collin will slip in through the front door—he stays on her porch most nights anyways—and he will slide into Paul's bed to hold her against him. Collin's arms are strong and his body warm, but she stays chilled as she weeps quietly against his chest. As she wipes her eyes and fights to find her smile, Cassie tells herself that the cold will pass.

The world turns far too fast to stand still forever.

* * *

The wind is bitterly cold, biting through her nightgown as she walks out onto the porch. Collin's huddled there, his eyes bloodshot and his hands shaking from a different kind of cold. It's the kind of cold that freezes and breaks your insides, letting them crumble until nothing warm and good is left. That's the thing about emptiness, it hollows out parts you take for granted, and you're left falling in on yourself.

Up until now Collin's always thought he was a good person. It's the realization that he might not be that rocks his sense of self, leaves him sliding and scrambling and lost. So lost.

Cassie's accepted long ago that the person she is, is flawed. Some of her flaws she can laugh off, some she can dance around, but some can bring her crashing to her knees if she lets herself look too long. She wonders if Collin knows that it's the mirror in front of you that is warped the most, that magnifies the bad and twists the good, but she knows that the worst of himself is all that Collin can see.

When she sits on his lap, pressing her nose to his warmer, larger one, Collin jerks. They are closer to each other than any of the others, and Paul doesn't mind how scrunched together Cassie and Collin become, as long as he can keep them both under his watchful eye. But there are limits to the amount of physical contact Collin feels is appropriate. He's aroused—unintentionally, of course, and she sees the self-disgust in his eyes—but Cassie simply wraps her arms even tighter around his neck and stays close.

Collin's escape from himself is sex, in losing himself in feeling another against him, but he's too shaky and dangerous to be so close to a human right now, and he tells her that. Cassie thinks she stopped being human the day she took another's life. She has less to lose than most, and Collin is one of those things that she still has. So she presses herself into him, and whispers that he won't always feel this way. He's a good person, the very best kind of person, but even the best make mistakes.

Silently she thinks that it's not as simple as that. Promising to never do something again can't take that action back in the first place. A whispered apology on chattering lips doesn't make some things okay. Life is harsher, less forgiving than the lessons they teach in school, and no amount of scolding will fix Collin's broken heart. Not when he was the one to break it himself.

So Cassie does the only thing she knows to do, and she holds Collin as he cries. His tears are warm only in the space between his face and her collarbone. As the water chills on her skin, Cassie _knows_ it won't always be this way. Time has a way of taking everything, no matter how badly they might want to hold onto it, and for better or worse, everything changes. One day, she promises, guiding his big arms around her small waist. One day this pain will go away. Until then, just hold on. Just hold on, because one day it will be okay.

Upstage right and all alone on a frozen stage, Cassie holds en pointe just for sheer spite. For Collin. For her family. Even for _him_. But not for herself, not quite yet.

* * *

Somewhere between the warmth of the cabin and the bitter world outside, between the heart of winter and the warmth of spring, Cassie becomes lost. There are only a few steps from her bed to her front door, her front door and the Pack that she's supposed to belong to, but inches or miles, it's too far.

She's felt this before, this utterly overwhelming loneliness, the emptiness inside. It's thick, fluid, starting in the center of her belly and rolling through her limbs all the way to her toes and fingertips. It twists her up until she can't see straight, can't move, and can't breathe. But it's all inside, and unlike Paul, there's nothing inside Cassie but herself. Some people are whole, some people are strong, some people can weather any storm that slams into them, inexorably forcing their way. But Cassie's not like that, and her strength is a weakness. She bends, and bends, and where others would break, she continues to bend more. And just because she hasn't shattered doesn't make it any easier, doesn't mean that her insides aren't just as damaged.

The pain and the grief and the guilt come and they blow through her like a winter storm, freezing everything in sight. Her hand reaches for the cellphone in her pocket. It's only a call to Collin or to Jake, or to any of them really. They would come, because that's what they do for each other. But it's been too long, and she's supposed to be over her hurt, and she's convinced that they expected more from her than this. Cassie's the Third's mate, and she should be stronger than this. She should be standing by now, bracing herself against the winds instead of still crushed by them. There's a limit to the understanding of others, and Cassie's aware that she's a burden, an embarrassment, an inconvenience that refuses to heal in an appropriate amount of time.

Strong. Convenient. Appropriate. That's never been who Cassie is, and she's old enough to know that there's no shame in it.

Cassie needs them, but her fingers close into her palm and she leaves the phone in her pocket. There's no shame, but there's still pain, and it skews her thinking. Her insides twist and writhe and knot until she thinks she'll never untie herself. The storm rages, and she bends until it's as far as she can go. Bends as her bare feet take her out into the night, away from the warmth of her home and her bed.

Her knees buckle, her toes slipping on ice. Frozen and humiliated, she's glad that no one sees her on the ground. There's no shame in who she is, but she still feels it anyways. Sometimes saving one's self is simply surviving the storms that others never feel in the first place, but it takes her a long time to get back up, and she's barely swaying on her feet this time. But at least she's no longer on her knees in the frozen mud, and a part of her knows that's something. Cassie's still able to be optimistic, even as she feels the weight of her hurt crushing her from the inside out.

It's Jake that eventually comes, but the storm has already passed. Instead of crying, she's dancing now, and as the russet wolf stretches out alongside her feet, she doesn't realize that her Alpha pulled the curtains on her shame long ago.

Upstage right and out of breath, Cassie still spins. The show must go on, no matter how much she sometimes wishes it would end.

* * *

"I killed my father, Paul."

It's a Friday night, and they are slow dancing in front of Paul's bed. It's a dance they know well, her fingers sliding beneath his shirt, tugging it over his abdominal muscles. To his credit, Paul doesn't stop turning. He's far too experienced to let a stumble make him lose his step, and his mouth traces the curve of her neck, breathing warmth across skin still numb from the late evening chill.

He doesn't shake his head, doesn't tell her she's wrong, doesn't tell her that her father's decisions were his own. Instead he lifts Cassie up, her damaged legs still beautiful as they tighten around his waist, and he places a knee on the mattress. His hands span her backside, roughened skin against smooth as he presses her down on the bedding beneath him.

"Talk to me," her wolf encourages her, because Cassie will talk about anything and everything but not what she _needs_ to talk about. And she's starting to realize that something's wrong. She's stumbling every other step, so much that it's impossible to hide it anymore. "Look at me, Cass," Paul tells her in his coarse voice, but it's softer with her than with anyone else.

It occurs to Cassie that she hasn't looked at Paul in a long time. She sees him, but she hasn't _looked_. She hasn't looked at anyone in a long time, not really. So Cassie raises her eyes to his, and what she sees there isn't easy. He loves her, and he's been hurting right along with her, no matter how far he's been from her side. His hands are strong, but they're tired too. The life Paul and Cassie lead isn't easy, and for someone who needs to control things, to protect and to strengthen and to _fix_, he's struggling.

"We're going to be okay," Paul promises her thickly, his heart somewhere between his sleeve and her throat, where Cassie's words are caught. "I know it's bad, Cass, but just don't give up. _Please_, momma, don't give up. We'll be okay."

He never asks her for anything, so it's hard to do anything but nod and whisper her promise, tears filling her eyes. She dances that night but she's not upstage right, because when he decides to lead, Cassie can't help but follow. She can't spin circles around him when she's dancing with him in the dark, but when he tries to coax her to center stage, she freezes up and pulls away. Her heels touch the ground, and no matter how hard she tries, she can't get them up again.

Upstage right is where she belongs now. Upstage right, but she's standing in place.

* * *

She has frozen.

Paul's speaking but she can't hear and she doesn't know what to say. So she sits on Paul's bed, and she stares across her prison, and she wonders if home is something that has ever existed. The things that she loved are gone, the hope that she has held to is gone, and she's filled with such emptiness that she's frightened of herself. The emptiness has frozen her limbs to her sides and her lip between her teeth, and as she chews on it, she forgets to chew on anything else. Paul's angry because he's frightened, but his words aren't enough to reach her.

She has frozen, and try as she might, Cassie can't move.

She can't move and she doesn't know what to say, so Cassie sits on Paul's bed and she thinks. She thinks about her life, and the mistakes that she has made every step of the way. Every failure, every loss, every good intention gone wrong. She's brought this on herself, no matter how much she's wanted things to be different. She hadn't planned on this. If she could speak, she'd tell Paul she was sorry, she'd never planned on this. In killing the Hunter, she has turned the gun on herself.

It explains some things though. Why she always gets weary sooner than she used to. Why she always seems to be sick.

Hands like ice touch her wrist, and a musical voice says that the medicines work better now. If they can get her T-cell count up and her viral load under control, she and Paul can still have children. It's not a death sentence, as long as she's responsible about taking her pills. There's ice in the glass of water Paul gives her, but Cassie can't feel the cold as she swallows mechanically. The Hunter's kiss has lingered, no matter how far the wolf took her away, and Cassie thinks that they could barely afford milk.

They will never recover from this.

When she begins to cry, it's not for herself, but for Paul. He deserves better, so much better than her, and he's being punished for her mistakes. When it was just her own mistakes, it was easier to accept, but Cassie has once again taken someone she loves down with her. He's on his knees, his face in her lap, and it's only when she feels the heat of his tears on her bared skin that Cassie begins to thaw.

She's seen him cry once before, but he breaks down completely now. He loves her and this is more than he can bear. Her arms are the first to push past the ice in her veins, and they wrap around his head. Her fingers stroke through his hair, and she moves her lips. She doesn't know what she says, but she thinks that he listens to her far better than she has ever listened to him. He hears her, and he nods. He kisses her fingers and her heart and her mouth, and then he struggles to his feet. He stands because he's better at that than she's been lately, and maybe that's why she was able to fall so far in the first place. But she can't let him fall, he's too important. Too important to the world. Too important to her.

Funny, how she seems to be the only thing important to him.

"Don't be afraid, Paul," Cassie finally hears herself say, because her ears are thawing too, and the rest of her is following slowly. "We don't have to be afraid of anything, not when we're together."

"Are you still here with me, Cass?" he asks, because for a long time he has thought that she wasn't. But Cassie smiles, and it's small, but it's real. Of course she's with him. Paul's the only thing she doesn't regret about all of this. She'd take a life with him, even with…this…then any life without him.

Her partner takes her by the hand, and they dance a dance unlike any she's known before. Long nights as the medicines make her ill, longer days where he searches for some job that won't take him away from her, because he refuses to leave her again. But icy hands are right, the medicines are better, and an Alpha does more than keep his Pack safe. He keeps them strong, when without him, she would have been taken by the cold. Between the strength of two enemies, a piece of paper says that she's okay for now. The Hunter's kiss may still linger, but there is wolf blood coursing through her now warmer veins. There's never been enough room in her life for both of them, and the wolf will win. He has always won in the end.

Paul keeps her secrets to himself, but there are two that know. Two that watch them dance, ready to catch them if they start to stumble. But Cassie's fought her way back to her toes, because Paul's too tall to have her heels stay on the ground. The distance between them has grown too far already, and both know that the curtain can fall before either one of them is ready.

Cassie turns slowly, but she's still turning. Once upon a time, before she had stepped into the woods, little Red had loved to dance, and even broken fairy tales don't have to end sadly. Sometimes they taper off, and sometimes they aren't broken, just set down and left alone. And as the season starts to turn just as slowly, Cassie lets go. She lets go of the guilt and the shame and the regret, because it's not just her shoulders that those things have pressed so heavily down into. She lets go of her sadness, because that's never been who she wants to be, even when it's who she is.

She can't let go of the pain, because her pain is still hers, no matter how much Paul keeps trying to carry that burden. But as she slowly, slowly, picks up speed, she lets go of the hands that have been holding her steady. She dances to show him that she can, and that more than that, she _wants_ to. For him, but mostly for herself.

Upstage right, she lifts her arms to the sky and holds herself imperfectly en pointe out of sheer willpower. After all, Cassie's danced long enough to know that Paul can't hold them both up forever.

* * *

Cassie wakes in her bed, in her home, not just his.

Right now that home is an RV parked on a coastline, and a man sleeping off a night of love that they both desperately wanted. As she walks outside into a sweet spring morning, wearing nothing but a ring on her finger and her husband's scent on her skin, Cassie can still taste her new name on her lips. The sun is breaking over the treetops to the east. As she stands on the cliff side, the waves crashing so far beneath her feet, Cassie feels the warm wind brushing across her bare limbs.

She wonders if she's the only cold thing left in La Push.

A part of her has gone, and she has accepted that the hollow inside is something that may never be filled. She's always run, but there's nowhere to run anymore. She's always hidden in noise, but the world is quiet now, a peaceful calming place. Four walls are only a prison if you want them to be, if you're determined to see them that way. Sometimes those walls are just a shelter, a place to lose private battles, a place to win important wars. It's taken time, and it might take more, but Cassie knows that today is good enough. This moment, right now, is good enough. There is happiness here, if she wants it. There are people here, if she's ready to let them in.

It's a long drop to the ocean below, and Cassie leans out over the edge, balancing on the tips of her toes. Then she takes a deep breath. Alone, Ksanochka Fedorova steps off the cliff, disappearing into the roiling foam of the waters below. She has done her best, and she has still failed historically. It's time to let that failure go.

Cassie Coho remains on the top of the cliff, and for a moment, the slightest moment, she wishes she could follow. That's the thing about hurt. Sometimes letting it go is far harder than being given it in the first place. Try as she might, the sun may never warm her skin the way that it used to, and sometimes there never is enough time to make things okay. But Cassie turns and walks back down the hill, back towards the man that's leaning against an RV, a smile on his stern face. He's been waiting for her for a long time, and she's ready now. She's ready for this life, she's ready for him, and he knows it. The wolf takes Cassie's hand and spins her in a circle, making her laugh that soft breathy laugh that he loves. Then he snatches her up in his arms and dances her back inside again.

Somewhere between the campfire and the bed, Paul kisses the last snowflake from her nose without even realizing it.

* * *

Upstage right, Cassie's heels silently touch the flooring of their own accord, and there's no one to see her take her bow. There are no roses on the stage, and there's no applause as she goes. This dance was hers and hers alone.

Cassie still smiles anyways.


End file.
